29 January 2017

"I
know, I know
If you could go back you
would walk with
Jesus
You would march with King
Maybe assassinate Hitler
At
least hide Jews in your basement
It would all be clear to
you
But people then, just like you
were baffled, had
bills
to pay and children they didn’t
understand and they
too
were so desperate for normalcy
they made anything
normal
Even turning everything inside out
Even killing, and
killing, and it’s easy
for turning the other cheek
to be
looking the other way, for walking
to be talking, and they
hid
in their houses
and watched it on television, when they
had television,
and wrung their hands
or didn’t, and your
hands
are just like theirs. Lined, permeable,
small, and
you
would follow Caesar, and quote McCarthy, and Hoover, and you
would want
to make Germany great again
Because you are
afraid, and your
parents are sick, and your
job pays shit
and where’s your
dignity? Just a little dignity and those kids
sitting down in the highway,
and chaining themselves
to
buildings, what’s their fucking problem? And that
kid
That’s King. And this is Selma. And Berlin. And Jerusalem.
And now
is when they need you to be brave.
Now
is when
we need you to go back
and forget everything you know
and
give up the things you’re chained to
and make it look so easy
in your
grandkids’ history books (they should still have them,
kinehora)
Now
is when it will all be clear to them."

22 January 2017

We
were supposed to do a job in Italy
and, full of our
feeling for
ourselves (our sense of being
Poets
from America) we went
from Rome to Fano, met
the
mayor, mulled
a couple matters over (what's
a
cheap date, they asked us; what's
flat drink). Among
Italian literati

we could recognize our counterparts:
the
academic, the apologist,
the arrogant, the amorous,
the
brazen and the glib—and there was one

administrator (the
conservative), in suit
of regulation gray, who like a good
tour guide
with measured pace and uninflected tone
narrated
sights and histories the hired van hauled us
past.
Of all, he was the most politic and least
poetic,
so it seemed. Our last few days in Rome
(when
all but three of the New World Bards had flown)
I found a
book of poems this
unprepossessing one had written: it was
there
in the pensione room (a room he'd
recommended)
where it must have been abandoned by
the
German visitor (was there a bus of them?)
to whom he had
inscribed and dated it a month before.
I couldn't read
Italian, either, so I put the book
back into the
wardrobe's dark. We last Americans

were
due to leave tomorrow. For our parting evening then
our
host chose something in a family restaurant, and there
we
sat and chatted, sat and chewed,
till, sensible it was our
last
big chance to be poetic, make
our mark,
one of us asked
"What's poetry?"
Is
it the fruits and vegetables and
marketplace of Campo dei
Fiori, or
the statue there?" Because I was

the
glib one, I identified the answer
instantly, I didn't have
to think—"The truth
is both, it's both," I
blurted out. But that
was easy. That was easiest to say.
What followed
taught me something about difficulty,
for
our underestimated host spoke out,
all of a sudden, with a
rising passion, and he said:

The statue represents
Giordano Bruno,
brought to be burned in the public
square
because of his offense against
authority,
which is to say
the Church. His crime was his belief
the
universe does not revolve around
the human being: God is
no
fixed point or central government, but rather
is
poured in waves through all things. All things
move.
"If God is not the soul itself, He is
the soul of the
soul of the world." Such was
his heresy. The day they
brought him
forth to die, they feared he might
incite
the crowd (the man was famous
for his eloquence). And so
his captors
placed upon his face
an iron mask,
in which

he could not speak. That's
how they
burned him. That is how
he died: without a word, in
front
of everyone.
And poetry—
(we'd
all
put down our forks by now, to listen to
the
man in gray; he went on
softly)—
poetry is
what

25 December 2016

And I, Joseph, was walking, and not walking, and I looked upinto the heavens and I saw the vault of the heavens standing still,and the birds of the heavens trembling,and I looked down on the earth and I saw a dishlying on the ground and workmen reclining,and their hands were in the dish,and those raising their hands were not raising them,and those who were bringing food to their mouths were not eating,but all of their faces were looking up,and I saw sheep being driven and the sheep standing still,and the driver's hand raised up as if to strike them,and I looked up to the winter stream and saw the young goatsand their mouths were touching the water and they drank not,and everything was astonished.

20 November 2016

by
Richard Newman

Bless
Their Hearts

At
Steak ‘n Shake I learned that if you add
“Bless their
hearts” after their names, you can say
whatever
you want about them and it’s OK.
My
son, bless his heart, is an idiot,she
said. He
rents storage space for his kids’
toys—they’re only one
and three years old!I
said, my
father, bless his heart, has turned
into a sentimental old fool.
He gets
weepy when he hears my daughter’s greeting
on our
voice mail. Before
our Steakburgers came
someone else blessed her office mate’s
heart,
then, as an afterthought, the jealous hearts
of the
entire anthropology department.
We bestowed blessings on many a
heart
that day. I even blessed my ex-wife’s heart.
Our
waiter, bless his heart, would not be getting
much tip, for
which, no doubt, he’d bless our hearts.
In a week it would be
Thanksgiving,
and we would each sit with our
respective
families, counting our blessings and blessing
the
hearts of family members as only family
does best. Oh, bless us
all, yes, bless us, please
bless us and bless our crummy little
hearts.

Richard
Newman, Domestic
Fugues,
2009.

13 November 2016

As I walked out one eveningAs I walked out one evening,Walking down Bristol Street,The crowds upon the pavementWere fields of harvest wheat.And down by the brimming riverI heard a lover singUnder an arch of the railway: ‘Love has no ending.‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love youTill China and Africa meet,And the river jumps over the mountainAnd the salmon sing in the street,‘I’ll love you till the oceanIs folded and hung up to dryAnd the seven stars go squawkingLike geese about the sky.‘The years shall run like rabbits,For in my arms I holdThe Flower of the Ages,And the first love of the world.'But all the clocks in the cityBegan to whirr and chime:‘O let not Time deceive you,You cannot conquer Time.‘In the burrows of the NightmareWhere Justice naked is,Time watches from the shadowAnd coughs when you would kiss.‘In headaches and in worryVaguely life leaks away,And Time will have his fancyTo-morrow or to-day.‘Into many a green valleyDrifts the appalling snow;Time breaks the threaded dancesAnd the diver’s brilliant bow.‘O plunge your hands in water,Plunge them in up to the wrist;Stare, stare in the basinAnd wonder what you’ve missed.‘The glacier knocks in the cupboard,The desert sighs in the bed,And the crack in the tea-cup opensA lane to the land of the dead.‘Where the beggars raffle the banknotesAnd the Giant is enchanting to Jack,And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,And Jill goes down on her back.‘O look, look in the mirror,O look in your distress:Life remains a blessingAlthough you cannot bless.‘O stand, stand at the windowAs the tears scald and start;You shall love your crooked neighbourWith your crooked heart.'It was late, late in the evening,The lovers they were gone;The clocks had ceased their chiming,And the deep river ran on.